The Truth of Things
by MegaNerdAlert
Summary: The first in a series of oneshots going backwards in time about the secret love of Hermione Granger and Minerva McGonagall.


**I've decided to start a series of one shots that go backwards in time. This one being the end of the story, and if you guys are kind and review, I'll post another which takes place a few years BEFORE this one, and I'll keep going backwards till I get to the beginning...how quickly this happens depends greatly on how kind you guys are with reviewing. Yes I am a total meanie. I trade reviews for updates. I take cookies, too. **

**Normal disclaimers...don't own, yada, yada, yada. **

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A woman in her mid sixties stood with her three grown children, watching a granite casket being levitated into position. She wore black like everyone else, though she stood apart from the crowd. Hogwarts had never seemed so bleak before. Leaves fell to the ground and shrivled up, though it was not even mid August yet. A cold wind blew across the Black Lake, bringing a chill along with the stale smell in the air to the site of the funeral. The person being burried today was Minerva McGonagall, who had been Headmistress of Hogwarts for the last forty years or so. It was a great loss to the wizarding world, and to these four people especially, though no one knew why.

Hermione Granger had been a student at Hogwarts during the second Wizarding War. Everyone recognized her as the brainy best friend of Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived and went on to to great things after destorying the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Back when she was at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall had only been the Deputy Head, under the great Albus Dumbledore.

Hermione sighed, running her fingers through her mostly grey hair. She could feel people watching her. Since the end of the war, she had become a bit of a mystery. After graduating, she'd stayed at Hogwarts, earned her Transfiguration Mastery in just two years, and then taken over McGonagall's post as Professor of that subject. She'd not left Hogwarts since, had never married, and her children were something of a scandal, as she'd never revieled who thier father was. It wasn't hard to tell that all three where products of the same union - they all at dark, wavy hair, and green eyes. Alot of people thought that were the children of Harry Potter, though both he and Hermione had denyed the fact publically since it was first suggested.

"Artemis, Amos, Ariana," Hermione whispered to her two sons and daughter. "I think that it's time for us to leave."

"The funeral isn't half over, mum," Artemis, her eldest, said crisply. "Just because they're all looking...I mean...we have a right to be here."

The youngest, Ariana, piped in. "Mum is right. _The Headmistress_ would understand. It's been a long couple of days."

"I miss her already," Amos said quietly. "It wont be home...Hogwarts, I mean, without her."

_Home_, Hermione thought sadly. To anyone else, this conversation would seem perfectly free of suspition. None of the four had said anything to give a sign of what they were all thinking. No one knew that Hermione had not just lot a colleague and friend...she'd lost her wife of forty years, and the mother of her children. No, nobody in the wizarding world, not even Harry Potter, knew that Hermione Granger and Minerva McGonagall had begun a love affair when the former was only were secretly married a day after Hermione graduated. The Headmistress' looks of disaproval during each of Hermione's pregnancies was not because of the scandle of the unknown father, but because she felt Hermione should have taken the year off during the times she was carrying each of their children.

For a while, people thought that Hermione had only been pregnant to surrogate for someone else, as once the children were born, no one saw hide nor hair of them until they reached thier majority, one by one. Minerva and Hermione had kept them hidden while they were young children, and they had gone to school in America as to not arrouse suspition. They all carried the surname 'McGrane', so outside of the five of them, no one had a clue they they were really the childen of Hermione Granger. After Ariana, the youngest of the three, had graduated and come home to Scotland, Hermione had made a single, public statment that all three were her children, and had been hidden from the public eye since they were born. Now that they were adults, she did not want them to have to hide anymore.

Not even the childrens' respective spouses knew the truth of who thier 'father' was, though it had been long ago agreed that after Minerva passed away, Hermione would sit down with her children and thier spouses and tell them the truth. The secret had only been kept because it would have meant the end of Minerva's career and a sentence to Azkaban if anyone ever found out she'd bedded a student. After all, Hermione had been pregnant with Artemis before she'd turned seventeen...that hadn't been planned. There was no way everyone wouldn't know just how long the two had been together. Now, it didn't matter. Now, the rest of the family could know why the Headmistress had often been present had 'family gatherings'. Hermione's seven grandchildren, all now attending Hogwarts, would now understand why the Headmistress always doted on them.

"So when do you want to have that meeting?" Ariana asked. "I've been working on my shield charm all day in case my husband tries to hex me for not telling him sooner. Hell, my father-in-law is going to have a cow, mum."

Hermione nodded in agreement to her daughter's statement. Ariana had married Albus Potter, son of her own friend, Harry. Amos was married into the Potter family too, though off by a branch. Harry's cousin Dudley had married a witch and his daughter Kaylee was magical like her mother. Like Ariana and Albus, Amos and Kaylee had spend summers together for most of thier lives. Artemis was also married to a witch, though she was a muggleborn girl, who very much reminded Hermione of a younger version of herself. Her name was Holly. "Tonight," Hermione answered. "We'll tell everyone the truth of things, all about your mother, tonight."

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**PS...I'm doing oneshots and not updating my multi chaps because presently, my computer with all my files is still in AZ, while I have moved to PA. So, waiting for my stuff to join me. Ugh! However, I'm an addict and can't not write for that long, so you get this out of my desperation. **


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